Projects would cost $400M and take at least 20 years to complete

September 04, 2013|By Robert McCoppin, Chicago Tribune reporter

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ comprehensive plan for the Des Plaines is a response to local pleas to prevent the kind of flooding that damaged thousands of homes last spring, according to corps project manager Jeff Zuercher. (Chris Walker, Chicago Tribune)

New flood-control projects targeted for the Des Plaines River could prevent millions of dollars in damages to Chicago-area homes and businesses, engineers say — but only if taxpayers can come up with the millions needed to pay for them.

In the aftermath of record flooding this spring, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is proposing a new list of long-term anti-flooding measures that includes new levees or flood walls in Des Plaines, River Grove and Riverside and one in the Schiller Park-Franklin Park area. The corps also would remove several dams from the river and start a new program in the Chicago area to pay half the cost to flood-proof individual homes.

The price tag for the wish list is $400 million. At best it would take 20 years to do all the work, but federal funding for such projects has been reduced in recent years. Still, state officials welcomed the proposal as a good, comprehensive plan that could prevent much of the heartbreak the area saw from widespread flooding in April.

The Corps of Engineers study covered the Upper Des Plaines River and its tributaries from Racine and Kenosha counties in Wisconsin into Lake and Cook counties, an area spanning about 60 miles north-south and 8 miles east-west. The need for more flood management was highlighted by repeated flooding, most memorably in 1986, 1987 and this spring, when thousands of buildings were flooded.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has awarded more than $148 million in disaster aid statewide in response to that most recent flood, most of it for housing assistance including rent and home repairs.

Corps project manager Jeff Zuercher said the unprecedented breadth of the study was meant to respond to local pleas to stop as much of the flooding as possible.

"We're really digging down to the root cause of many of these situations and trying to find solutions," he said.

The study outlines a "full plan" of 28 projects, some of which, such as a First Avenue Bridge raising in River Grove or a pond-pumping plan in Maine Township, would be up to other agencies to complete.

While the plan does not call for buying homes in flood plains to demolish them, it would provide for a new program to pay up to half the cost to flood-proof hundreds of homes — both to keep water out and to move utilities above the reach of floodwaters so homeowners could stay in homes even if the basements flooded.

The plan also would restore almost 11,000 acres of wetlands and natural habitats to help soak up and slow the drainage of torrential rains. Much of the land targeted for restoration in Illinois is owned by county forest preserves and much of it in Wisconsin is private farmland, but all such restorations would be voluntary, Zuercher said.

At least three dams would be removed to provide safer water flow for boating and fishing in Wheeling, Des Plaines and Park Ridge, and a reservoir project was proposed for Aptakisic Creek in Buffalo Grove.

The net benefit of the work, after comparing construction costs with expected damage prevention, was estimated at about $6 million a year over 50 years.

Many of the projects may take years to reach fruition, if they ever do, officials acknowledged. Among six projects proposed in a similar, smaller study issued in 1999, only two levees, stretching through Mount Prospect, Prospect Heights and Des Plaines, have been built.

Arlan Juhl, director of the Office of Water Resources for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, welcomed the plan.

"This looks like a plan that might deliver some benefits throughout the region," he said.

The report is available at http://1.usa.gov/1dtLpFg and at area libraries. Public comments may be emailed to the corps at UDPR&T@usace.army.mil.